Developing Affordable Remote Immersive Collaboration Spaces for All

Critical to 21st Century living is the ability to be connected globally. Technology and infrastructure now allow unprecedented access to most parts of the planet, enabling global stewardship efforts such as addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, assisting in international disaster recovery efforts and implementing foreign aid projects. However, despite the prevalence of video-conferencing facilities and online engagement platforms, face-to-face meetings still prevail, particularly in academia where air-travel is the dominant contributor to most institutions’ greenhouse gas emissions. The cost of global collaboration is also significant with regard to work-life balance (time away from family and friends), and financial (drawing on often limited project budgets for sustainable development work). Addressing this challenge, in 2017 the authors embarked on an action-research agenda to create affordable remote immersive collaboration spaces that could replace ‘inconvenient travel’, involving super-narrow bandwidth transmission where data stays local. In this presentation the authors will overview their journey into creating ‘deep-work’ environments with increased levels of trust and engagement, and their break-through with regard to disaster-response applications. This will include a description of the facilities created, and discussion of the key role of collaborative industry-academia-government engagement, engagement with the NSW Volunteer Rescue Association, and the catalytic role of the International Society of Digital Earth including partners in Japan (Chubu University) and Europe (Joint Research Centre). The authors will also discuss next steps and opportunities for engaging with the research.